RERUN REVIEWS: Smallville 1×11 “Hug”, 1×12 “Leech”, 1×13 “Kinetic”

Oh yeah it’s time, Rerun Reviews has reached that sweet spot in Smallville’s first season and boy is it good! Like many shows, up until this point, Smallville was struggling to find itself and consistently be a good show. With “Hug,” “Leech,” and “Kinetic” Smallville found it’s footing and what worked story-wise for the characters at this point. You could see the actors were really becoming comfortable with their characters as well as the writing being drastically more enjoyable than what we had become accustomed too. Unlike the genre tales of last week, these episodes played around with Clark’s relationships and showed a lot of characters in fun new lights. Not only that but these were just plain fun episodes that have been quite possibly burned out on my original DVD. So let’s get to work, because this is gonna be a good, nay really good week for us all.

Hug

“Hug,” oh “Hug”, by many considered a great episode, but to me, my personal favorite of the season. The story centers around Bob Rickman and Kyle Tippet, two former salesmen who, after the meteor shower gained the power of persuasion, which in and of itself is one of the cooler powers to posses. Now Rickman, who became a wealthy businessman running pesticide corporation after gaining his powers, has set his eyes on expansion and the site of his new plant is going to be where the Kent Farm currently stands. In the meantime, Clark and Lana have a falling out because she does not trust “Crazy Kyle who lives in the woods.” Eventually this all leads to a hand shake off between Bob and Kyle to see who “the better salesman is” and Clark getting plastered with bullets from a mind-controlled Lex. Oh and Chloe gets mind-controlled into making out with Clark which is as awesome/funny as it sounds.

“Hug” always intrigued and excited me as an episode because it took a fun power and ran with it to make for an excellent the storyline. What really made this episode was the characters of Bob and Kyle, where Bob was as seedy as you’d expect him to be and Kyle was more of a reluctant hero and you could see from the moment he used his powers on Chloe that he was the more powerful of the two. It also created a neat parallel that Clark and Lex allude to over the course of the episode of whether their friendship will last. Where things are still very fluid for the characters, we as an audience know where the end destination will be and that helps to elevate this episode to what it is. Chloe kissing Clark is a win for mind control powers any day in my book. One of the classics.